In Castle's defense, a mystery writer, and one who is confronted with violent crime on a weekly basis, is likely to be a little over-protective--since he can't help imagining all the terrible things that might happen to an unsuspecting teenage girl in the big city.

Well, I wouldn't go that far. I still adore Alexis. I just think this episode was rubbing it in a little. And Castle not trusting his daughter has been too much of a recurring theme this season, and that makes him look bad.

But she did give him a reason not to trust her: she lied. He caught her "tell".

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The point is, even if she was keeping a secret, he should know her well enough by now to know that she's a good and trustworthy person and that, if she did need to deceive him, it was probably for a legitimate reason. One single deception shouldn't be enough to make him forget everything he knows about her character and start assuming the worst. That's how trust works. If you really trust someone, you don't toss out that trust the moment they're less than completely honest with you. You have faith that there's a good reason for it.

^ She lied to his face (more than once), and Castle's been consistently shown to be somewhat overprotective. And I think people are missing the fact the Castle was shown to be in the wrong for tracking her like that.

Good episode overall, though I admit the details of the cases are becoming less and less interesting than the interplay between Castle, Beckett, Ryan, Esposito, and Montgomery. In this particular case, the political situation of the city was more interesting. Taking down a corrupt DA mostly offscreen is a pretty big plotpoint; are they going to go anywhere with this?

^ She lied to his face (more than once), and Castle's been consistently shown to be somewhat overprotective. And I think people are missing the fact the Castle was shown to be in the wrong for tracking her like that.

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What? We're not saying the episode suggested he was in the right. Where did you get that idea? We're saying that by now, Castle should know better. Yes, he's been shown to be overprotective before, but that's exactly why he should know better by now -- because in the past, his overprotectiveness has proven to be unwarranted and unfair to Alexis. My point is that instead of rehashing the same old story beat they've already done several times, they should've allowed Castle to learn from his past mistakes and not go so overboard with the protectiveness and suspicion this time around.

I think it's more a case of the third season getting a new writing staff and changing the characterizations somewhat. The whole show has been a little bit off this year. Castle has become more of a childlike caricature.

When a reporter is found dead inside a restaurant's pizza oven, Beckett and Castle go to work on solving the case. They must figure out if his story "The Pizza Wars" is what got him killed or if there's something more to the story.

Not a great one. The gag with all the similarly-named pizzerias was too silly. And I'm getting tired of the formulaic interrogations where they haul a suspect in, grill him because they think he's the murderer, and then have him give an airtight alibi that clears him in ten seconds. Why the hell don't they start by asking for an alibi and save us all a lot of wasted time?

Plus, it was too easy to figure out who the killer was, and only partly because of the "the biggest-name guest star is the killer" rule. Liz Vassey's character claims she was attacked by the guy they're after, but nobody (including the audience) ever sees the alleged attacker? In a mystery story, if something is told but not shown, that's a pretty clear giveaway for misdirection.

And the weekly cell-phone commercials incorporated into the dialogue are getting a little too blatant. Castle actually says "There's an app for that?" Plus the whole "Murdered guy drops his cell phone down a sewer grate so that the cops will find it and see the crucial picture on it" plot point was a bit strained, like they were reaching to find a way to fit a cell phone into the mystery so they could spend more time talking about cell phones and their features.

^Maybe, but the way it was handled in that early scene was just too farcical and contrived, with all four "Nicks" showing up within a minute of each other just in time to be mentioned in dialogue and prompt an Abbott-and-Costello-ish series of misunderstandings.

I thought this one was OK. I do agree that it was pretty obvious as soon Liz Vassey's character was "attacked" that she was the killer. I didn't mind the three Ray's stuff to much, I don't think it got anywhere near as annoying as it could have.

Castle and Beckett must solve the murder of a champion swimmer who had a shot at the Olympics. They need to sort through all the secrets they uncover to find what led to his death. Meanwhile, Castle's poker buddies offer their views on the case.